We should never have left Wales… now we find ourselves slap bang in the middle of a Stephen King film,” Linda’s dreadful mother, Eunice, tells her. Linda is in her 40s, living with her dull husband, Terry, on an estate in the town of Hexford and working part-time in a charity shop, when the bodies of young women start turning up. The police are making investigations and launching appeals, but Linda and her neighbours in Cavendish Avenue know the killer must be someone close to home. And while they say there’s safety in numbers, Linda is wary, “because you can never quite be sure of who’s wandering around in those numbers with you”. The ending was a clever switch if you suspend – and I mean really suspend – disbelief. It was too much of a stretch for my suspenders, I’m afraid, and I didn’t buy it, not with these characters. With some modification to the characters, it could be a great idea. A Tidy Ending is thoroughly absorbing… Cannon carefully unspools this character-driven mystery using the superb storytelling we’ve come to expect from her.” — Olivia Kiernan, author of Too Close to Breathe But, as we delve deeper and deeper into Linda’s psyche and the time gaps between Cannon’s alternating ‘Now’ and reflective narratives diminish, an intense concern and foreboding grows.

A highly entertaining thriller with a huge, warm, beating human heart and a central character that stays with you long, long after reading. I loved it." - Kate Hamer Linda relates her story from within some sort of care facility, six weeks after everything happened, but it’s soon apparent that she’s an unreliable narrator. She presents as naïve, a bit simple, and is used to people underestimating her, doesn’t mind that, in fact. Those who are aware of her history might put it down to a traumatic childhood experience… This is a difficult book to try and write a synopsis and whatever I say just doesn’t seem to do it justice. I loved it from start to finish and would highly recommend it to other readers. So cleverly written and so worth reading.Linda and her mother, Eunice, left Wales to avoid just this sort of thing. When the body count rises to three, Linda begins to pay more attention to the changes in her husband’s schedule, and the new variations in his work. Linda pays attention to even the seemingly insignificant details. She would bring it to the attention of the police, but knows they’d never listen anyway. Joanna Cannon creates a world that is so real, so parochial & stifling you can feel it. Then adds in a killer. Glorious." - Jane Fallon

Meanwhile, Terry is going to work and coming home, and expecting his dinner on the table, and for Linda to be there for him. As he increasingly spends more time at work, the news is filled with stories of young girls going missing, and as the reader, our imagination starts to wonder exactly where Terry has been and what he has been doing when he isn’t at work and hasn’t arrived home.. Jo’s writing is as delicate and precise as tapestry and Linda is a character you’ll never forget’ JILL MANSELLReaders are LOVING this book: And was Karen one of the piano girls? Yes, she was because she had the daffodil painting. But how did Linda know that before going to Rebecca and Jolyon's flat? She and Terry have watched the news, seen the press conference about the killing. They are an odd pair, as he is a slob who seems to live to drink beer and litter while Linda lives to daydream and clean. She scrubs everything and begrudges every spot or stain. She has plans. Overall, what a terrific read. It’s such a well written character driven book that has all the ingredients I like in a well executed novel.A compellingly crafted, darkly funny and compulsive read, full of twists... a joy and a triumph." - Rachel Joyce It would be nice,” I said to a woman sitting next to me in the dayroom, “if life was like that. If you could just cut around the pieces you didn’t care for.”

Linda’s husband Terry, mostly gets on her nerves and when he didn't irritate her he was in front of the tv. But when he starts to spend long hours at work which is an odd thing for him to do Linda becomes suspicious, especially when at the same time young women in the area start to go missing.Jo’s writing is as delicate and precise as tapestry and Linda is a character you’ll never forget’ JILL MANSELL EXCERPT: There are no letterboxes to shout through here, of course. No garden wall to stand on and no doorbell to ring. All the tiny details, all the quiet, unnoticed edges of the world have been taken away, and it's only when they're gone you realise how much you depended on them to make sense of everything else.